


nothing's sad til it's over

by ballerinaroy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Mild Language, Multi, Pining, Possibly Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:33:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23186317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballerinaroy/pseuds/ballerinaroy
Summary: Never once had Ron considered a future without them. Six in school, one on the run, and the four after where they loved one another fully. Every year had felt like a step in the right direction. Without them, everything seems lost. Half of his life has been spent with them. It doesn’t seem right that the next half won’t.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Harry Potter/Ron Weasley
Comments: 8
Kudos: 67





	nothing's sad til it's over

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story about a breakup. When someone’s heart is broken they have the tendency to do things that hurt other people whether intentional or otherwise. It does not make them a bad person.

They break up.

The conversations in the days before are littered with clues.

“Relationships forced in battled rarely survive peace.”

“We’re not the people we once were. I’m in love with the people we were, not who we are now.”

And then, worst of all:

“I miss my friends. We can’t even stand to be around each other anymore.”

She wasn’t lying, though Ron really rather her be blowing the whole thing out of proportion. But they knew it too, can feel their bonds breaking. The difference, Ron thought, was that they were too coward to name it. Hermione was more of a Gryffindor than they’d ever be.

The separation was only temporary. That’s what Hermione promised when she went away that first weekend. That she needed some time to think, clear her head. When she came home they’d cleaned the whole place from top to bottom, cleared out the fridge and scrubbed the second toilet she’d been asking after for ages. She drank with them and they age and laughed but didn’t fuck and that should have been the first clue it wasn’t temporary.

But Ron ignored all the signs and he found himself surprised to find her at the kitchen table, belongings packed and a serious look on her face. She tries sitting them down but Harry runs.

“I can’t do this. I thought I could but I can’t.”

She’s crying and every word feels like a punch in the gut. He wanted to fight back but it feels like drowning.

“I thought a weekend away would help but every second closer to home felt like someone was choking me.”

Later, he’ll understand the sensation but now it feels unfair. They’d been his shelter, his safe place every moment since they’d charged into battle. He’d grown compliant in accepting their comfort. Half his life spent with them. It doesn’t seem right that the next half won’t.

They try and continue, him and Harry but it’s rather difficult to fall back in love with someone when you’re mourning a break-up. When a third of your trio has left you and you can no longer blame anything for your problems. They live together and then they don’t and when one day Harry announces he’s moving out it doesn’t come as a surprise.

Ron drinks. And he drinks. And he drinks and on Monday he sobers up enough to go into the office where he’s forced to work with his ex and by Friday at noon he’s already halfway through a bottle. A drink to relax, a drink to sleep, a drink on Sunday morning because he has to face Mum and after all the work they did convincing her to accept them Harry and Hermione have gone and left him anyway.

They have the decency not to show up, which Ron can’t decide whether or not it’s a blessing because everyone’s always asking after them until the fifth Sunday with liquor lubed lips it’s easy to snap, “If you want to know about them I’d suggest asking because they sure as hell don’t talk to me anymore.”

Charlie takes him home. Nobody asks about Harry or Hermione again.

Harry’d moved cubicles and no one had been stupid enough to ask why and their reprieve makes them both yearn. When they run into each other it’s like fire running through them and everything is passionate and desperate. When they fuck he aches after and when Harry leaves the bed that they’d once shared it aches in a different way.

Ron knows he has to move, but it’s hard when he still sees their ghosts in every nook and leaving the flat means accepting the truth. They’d fallen first out of lust then love until all that was left was friendship. Only they’d fallen out of practice with that too.

“I’m leaving.”

Ron wants to ask where he’s going, wants to ask to go with him but that’s not really what this conversation it about. It doesn’t matter where. Part of Ron knows the only reason Harry had ever resisted his urge to flee was because of them.

“Your mum asked me to come around for dinner before I go, would that be alright?”

Ron considers not going. He considers showing up plastered. He considers going to the forbidden forest and offering himself up to Aragog's descendants. But never once does he consider telling Harry he wasn’t welcome at his mother’s table.

The part of him that’s never given up hope, the part of him that still lives with their ghosts, hopes that by being there, surrounded by family, Harry will remember how good things have been and beg him for a second chance.

Instead Ron watches as he shares his plans with Ginny and George, asks Charlie for advice about dragons and promises to write once he’s settled. He thanks Ron’s mum and they hug for a long time. As they cling to one another Harry catches Ron’s eyes and they stare at one another’s faces.

The eyes that he’d once stared into for hours at a time. The mouth that had traced every freckle on his skin. The nose that would breathe him in deeply whenever they were apart for more than an hour.

Ron blinks and he’s gone.

Never once had Ron considered a future without them. Six years in school, one on the run, and the four after where they loved one another fully. Every year had felt like a step in the right direction. Without them, everything seems lost.

He runs into her while waiting for a form for an international portkey. Her legs are tan and her hair sun-kissed. Ron doesn’t think he’s ever seen her so relaxed save for the week they spent in a rented house in Spain. He can still picture them, laying out on the beach, daring one another to show more skin, drinking wine by a fire, the smell of salt and sweat and love.

The idea she’s gone on vacation without him almost kills him. Finding a man carrying her bag really does.

Eighteen months after Hermione’s departure he gives up the flat.

All their belongings are gone, long gone. Taken by them or thrown into fires since. But as he packs up what’s left it’s hard to call the kitchenware his and not theirs, look at the kettle without thinking about Hermione’s tea habit, to pack up all the things he’s inherited by being the last hold out. All the leftover things no one wanted.

In the end the boxes sit unopened for several weeks until he vanishes them all and starts over.

Her name is Vanessa and she works the second shift at the pub down the block to support herself while finishing her education. He impresses her with some card tricks George had invented but it takes him several weeks to work up the courage to ask her out to dinner.

“Sure, what would you like?”

She laughs at his expression when he thinks she misunderstood him. He laughs with her. They go to a movie and dinner and being with her makes him laugh more than he has in ages. He stays the night and a dozen more after that.

Ron begins to wonder how he’d ever thought of a future that didn’t include her. How he ever thought himself wise enough at eighteen to know what he wanted. And then sometimes, he feels like he’s betraying them. Then he reminds himself that neither of them has ever bothered to write.

“I had to get some space, to figure out what I wanted.”

He doesn’t ask what she figured out because he’s pretty sure he knows and that’s what makes it all the more worse.

They’d run into one another at the ministry. After their break up she’d needed a change and left to do research and write.

“It’s wasn’t really for me, I like reading and all, but all I was really doing was proving that there were issues, not doing anything to solve them.”

Now she’d taken a job back in her old department, reconnecting with their school mates. It didn’t take much to sort out that another relationship had ended. And when she’d asked about him Ron had no troublestelling her all about Vanessa, all about his new flat and their plans to go away for the weekend with her parents.

“She’s not even a witch.”

Hermione’s voice is critical and anger courses through him even as she begins to stammer an apology. He doesn’t give her the chance. Instead he walks away, mid-meal. It had taken Hermione four years to sort out what she wanted. But Ron no longer wants what she had to offer.

They stumble into one another at a defense conference. They’re seated across the room and don’t look at one another. They attend the same sessions without asking. At dinner, they are seated just a table away.

Ron thinks about asking him for a drink, asking him how he is but by the time he works up the courage Harry had already left. He finds comfort in the closest bar and is halfway through his second beer when he looks up and finds him standing amid a group of wizards from New Zealand.

Just for a moment, their eyes meet. Harry stands up and so does Ron. He follows him out the bar, through the lobby, up two flights of stairs and catches the hotel room door with one hand just before it closes. Harry’s waiting just on the other side and they don’t bother greeting one another.

It’s only when Ron wakes in the middle of the night and dresses as Harry snores on that it occurs to him that neither of them had said a word all night.

Hermione was right of course. It took another eight months to prove it, but Ron should have known better than to try and date someone who’s world he was a stranger in. Their decline started when he never offered to bring her home despite visiting with his parents weekly. It continued on their holiday when he’d no idea how to work the washer and resulted in hundreds worth of damages and it ended when she accused him of being a German operative. 

“Because there’s no better explanation as to why you don’t even understand how to use the bloody telephone!”

He tells Hermione about this over dinner and she’s sympathetic and apologetic and it takes her until the very end of the night, after they’d held hands and stood close and breathed the same air to finally inform him that she’s been seeing someone.

“It’s new, he’s perfectly nice but-“

Ron has loved her long enough to know exactly what that looks means. She wants something, something from him. A reason. By the time he can give her one she’s sharing news of a new partner. Drunkenly he owls her and her reply comes six months later as a wedding announcement.

A fortnight later and he suffers the same pain for a second time. _Harry Potter betrothed. Harry Potter spotted with a new man. Harry Potter elopes, inside the exclusive ceremony._ Their timing is so perfect Ron can’t but help think it is planned.

His mind spins, days pass without knowing. In love, both of them. Married, both of them. He had known all this time their lives hadn’t stopped when _their_ _life_ stopped but this seems so sudden, in his face.

 _Were you with him?_ Ron writes hundreds of times on scrolls that’ll never reach their intended recipient. _When you were with me? Does he love you like I loved you? Is it better?_

It’s all kindling for his fireplace.

He and Venessa get back together and break up. He finds Sylvia then Robert, Anthony then Heather. Every relationship feels intense and forever until they all end in the exact same manner.

“It’s like you’re from another planet.”

The same heartbreak played out again and again and again until at last George asks him why he bothers dating muggles knowing it won’t work out.

“You have a mountain of evidence! Or are you really just that thick you think the next one will be different?”

It’s not that he thinks the next one will be different. He knows what he’s doing and why he’s doing it.

“I don’t want the news getting back to them.”

There is so much pity in George’s eyes it’s painful to look at.

“They’ve moved on and haven’t bothered trying to hide it from you.”

Ron stops with the one-night stands. Stops with going out to muggle bars and starts spending time with his peers. At first, all they can ask about is Harry and Hermione but in time they figure out that the rumors of a relationship had been a bit more than rumors.

It’s nice, being in the wizarding world again. Committing to it.

Padma Patil.

It’s only weird because her twin is dating Ron’s ex but he spent a fair amount of time with his sister's ex so he thinks he might just be fucked in the head.

“Do you miss them?”

“Of course.”

How can he not? Eleven years being his favorite people to talk to. Eleven years of seeing one another every day. That bond of time isn’t forgotten. The sex aside they had been his best friends. And now, a dozen years later he doesn’t know them at all.

He turns forty. Is beginning to feel old. He has watched his brothers and sister have children. He loves them with all of his heart and endures their teasing about him making a great dad. But it’s not the thought of fatherhood that scares him. It’s the commitment. Being reliant on someone when everyone has left him.

“I’m not getting younger Ron.”

“I know.”

“So what is this?”

“I’m happy with the way things are. Can’t we just be happy? For now?”

Dating for four years and yet they still maintain their own flats, own friends, own lives. Happy enough together, but not together often enough to grate on one another. He’s scared too. Scared that when she really gets to know him she will discover inside him the same thing that has scared everyone else off.

It’s gradual. Tapering off the time they spend together. From every night to every other. Twice a week to once. A month-long trip and he only sends two letters. The last dinner they have it’s like sitting with an old acquaintance.

“Have you met someone?”

He knows. He’s been here one too many times. Can list off the signs of having grown bored with him without even paying attention.

“Met. Nothing more.”

“Then perhaps we should call it off before it becomes something more.”

And then...his father is gone. Ron had known he was getting old but not _that_ old. When had he gotten that old? How had Ron missed it?

He doesn't write them but they show up anyway. Hermione is wearing her wedding ring. Harry is not.

It’s the end of the night and they’re on either side of him. They’d come even if he hadn’t asked them. They’d stayed even though it had been painful—only, it hadn’t. Everything else about the day had been so impossible and yet being with them was still the easiest thing in the world.

He doesn’t want them to go, can’t bear the thought of them leaving. He looks at them both, a little cross-eyed and whispers _Please_.

They don’t say anything. Don’t need to. Harry stands and then Hermione and they pull him up and take him to a hotel and for the next three days, it doesn’t hurt.

“You could stay. We could stay.”

For once it isn’t him begging. It’s their first time breathing fresh air in a week. Eating lunch at a cafe by the water, still wearing the same formal clothes that had been wrinkled on the floor in the time intervening.

But Ron has spent too long in failed relationships to ignore the blatant issue.

“Does he know? Where you are?”

Hermione hides her left hand even though her wedding band had been absent for days. Harry’s expression doesn’t change, still stoic though Ron can sense he’s hopeful.

“Has anything ever felt the same as the way it was between us?”

Hermione looks close to tears as she answers Harry.

“Of course not, nothing has ever felt the same.”

They both look to him. The holdout. The one who spent the most time actively in love. The hinge that had brought them together in the first place. For a long moment Ron considers it. Considers hurting them like they have hurt him. Consider letting all the disappointment, all of the pining that has festered within him out.

But he doesn’t. For all that time has taught him that falling in love is the easy part. Staying is the harder one.

“And it never will.”

And yet they don’t. Not all at once. They have built lives outside of one another and combining them is a task so complex that it’s easier not to try at all. Three people. Three jobs. Three continents. Steps are taken, but not cemented. Hermione leaves her husband. Harry applies for work in England. Ron doesn’t push. The unsent letters are sent. The hard conversations they’d never had are spoken. He is hurt. They hurt him but they no longer pretend it never happened.

Another year. Weekends together when they can. Vacations that get pushed to their limit. One by one they come home. A new home. Just the three of them, the way it’s always meant to be.

Half their lives apart and before he agrees to this, to them he makes them promise too.

“No more running. No more halves. If we’re going to put ourselves though this again then it has to be for forever.”

“Forever.”

Harry hangs up his cloak on a peg that will always be his. Hermione kisses his cheek and there’s no hesitation in her tone.

“Forever.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old one where the ending never felt quite right. With everything going on I don't have the capacity to focus on anything new but hope to continue posting older works I have sitting around. 
> 
> I hope you all are staying safe out there!


End file.
